In message , at 08:38:48 on Tue, 15 Nov
2016, tim... remarked:
a political entity of which neither the council
that makes policy

They don't *make* much policy, they agree it. And they are elected
because they are ministers from the member states.

Are they? I don't remember anyone voting for Junker.

Bzzt - he's the President of the Commission, nothing to do with the
council of ministers.

which is precisely the point (of who makes policy)

The CoM, don't make policy, the agree it. But it is the Commission who
(attempt) to make it.

The Commission take a long term view of the whole policy landscape and
based on their research with a wide range of stakeholders publish what
we'd call a White Paper. I could be something like "we need to review
the copyright law, and here are some suggestions for a new Directive".

Parliament then debates it in detail, in committees, and responds to
both political opinion and lobbying while they thrash out the fine
detail. In the case of the Copyright Directive one of the many such fine
details was "what should we do about these new-fangled web proxy caches"
(because they by definition take a copy of what's passing through them).

Suggestions ranged from, a one extreme, ISPs having to buy a site
licence from each website operator [who cared enough to demand the
money] via buying a licence similar to that already in place from the
Performing Rights people, to setting up some kind of turnover-based levy
like that on blank cassettes, through to the final result which was "as
long as the ISP plays nicely by the rules -eg by respecting 'no cache'
tags, and not using the cache as a way to circumvent paywalls" - then
they'll have an exemption.

During the process, member states are consulted via their appropriate
departments (Patent Office at the time) who conduct their own local
consultions/negotiations on the fine detail with indigenous ISPs and
rightsholders. This all goes back into the pot and eventually the
Parliament produces a final version which by then is usually
rubber-stamped by the Council of Ministers (because their battles were
fought earlier in the process).

I lead for the UK ISP industry, and the outcome was modelled on the
agreement I hammered out with the initially extremely sceptical
rightsholder lawyers. Because of the way the UK is famous for coming
with mutually acceptable compromises, we punch well above our weight in
the drafting of a lot of EU law.

On a slight Brexit note, I think I was involved for about a year, at
times doing one day a week on this and related issues.

Obrail: several trips to Brussels on E* plus the Oslo airport express
(to attend a 3-day conference on just this one "tiny" detail).

30,000 additional civil servants for 2yrs - I suppose they might just
get a foothold on the tip of the iceberg.
--
Roland Perry